Best Website to Discover the Miami Art Scene (2009)

Wet Heat offers an insightful take on a critical moment for our city and the cultural engine driving it. During the past 18 months, Bill Bilowit and Grela Orihuela, originators of the popular site, have been producing documentary content chronicling Miami's new identity as a global arts destination and the players fueling its rise. They began screening the project during last December 2008's Art Basel confab. The arts confluence unfolding on their doorstep and the opportunity to chronicle living history is the Ariadne's thread that binds these films. "Each edition is an in-depth, cinéma vérité, behind-the-scenes profile of a Miami-based artist at a milestone moment in their career," Bilowit states. He and Orihuela recently wrapped filming locals Bert Rodriguez and Hernan Bas for hourlong documentaries respectively, excerpts of which can be viewed online. The documentaries shadow the artists in their studios and at art openings and fairs, and feature interviews with dealers, collectors, critics, and high-art honchos, conveying their development as artists as well as telling the story of Miami's dramatic upswing.